QUEZON City Vice Mayor Joy Belmonte has confirmed her plan to run for mayor, two years before the next local elections in 2019.
Belmonte told Manila Standard two other familiar faces—last-term Rep. Winston “Winnie” Castelo and former District 4 councilor Jesus Manuel “Bong” Suntay, the Philippine National Taxi Operators Association president—are expected to join the mayoralty race.
However, she admitted being a member of the opposition Liberal Party could be a setback to her political career under the Duterte administration.
The only daughter of District 4 Rep. Feliciano Belmonte Jr.—a former Speaker of the House of Representatives and three-term city mayor himself—the vice mayor will also end her third term in 2019.
Belmonte also said Senator Francis “Chiz” Escudero, who lives in District 3’s New Manila area, wanted to run for mayor to replace incumbent Herbert Bautista.
Escudero, however, “withdrew his plan, and instead would run for Congress,” she told the Standard.
The senator, who ran for vice president but placed fourth among six candidates in last year’s elections, was elected to Congress in 1998 at age 28, representing the first district of Sorsogon province. He was reelected to the House twice more before making the Senate in 2007.
According to Belmonte, Bautista, who ends his third and final term as mayor in 2019, would run for the House seat in the city’s third legislative district.
Last-term District 3 Councilor Allan Benedict Reyes would be facing Bautista, the vice mayor said.
But if the government shifts to a federal form as planned by President Rodrigo Duterte, Belmonte said Bautista would run for governor of Metro Manila.
Rumors, unconfirmed at presstime, also have Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority administrator Martin Diño joining the mayoralty race in 2019.
Diño was a former Quezon City village chief who helped rape victim Baby Echagaray pursue statutory rape charges against her stepfather, Leo Echagaray, who was later meted the death penalty.
Before Duterte appointed him to head the SBMA, Diño was chairman of the Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption—and famously filed a certificate of candidacy as the PDP-Laban party’s candidate for president before withdrawing in Duterte’s favor.